Welcome to this week’s edition of to get all the latest royal news and gossip with Tom Sykes and Tim Teeman.
Plus ça change
As The Daily Beast has been reporting this week, King Charles’ first state visit, to France, was canceled after violent riots broke out across the country in response to French moves to raise the pension age from 62 to 64. Charles had been due to visit to Germany after France, and this engagement has remained in place, with the king arriving in Berlin on Wednesday.
Britain’s King Charles greets people at the Bolton Town Hall in January.
REUTERS/Ed Sykes/File Photo
Meanwhile, palace insiders have been briefing the Sunday Times that face time with the British monarch is still a hot ticket, with one source close to the king saying: “World leaders really want to come and meet him. The transition has provoked enormous fascination, on a human and geopolitical level, people want to come and hear from him. There will be a lot of world leaders at his coronation.”
Party pooper
King Charles will get an early night the day before his coronation, with a self-imposed 6 p.m. curfew. “He doesn’t want to do anything in the evening in case it tires him out. There will be no partying,” a source told the Telegraph. Unlike his mother, who had a massive banquet on the eve of her big day, Charles reportedly set himself a 6 p.m. curfew on the night before the coronation. Well, he is 74—and she was 26.
Henri Paul’s friends and family defend Diana’s chauffeur
The best friend of Henri Paul, the chauffeur who was blamed for the car crash that killed both him and Princess Diana, has said he still does not believe his friend was drunk on the night of the accident.
Businessman Claude Garrec was speaking to MailOnline to defend his former best man after it emerged Netflix has created a mocked-up version of Diana’s post crash Mercedes as a prop for the new series of The Crown, filming now.
Henri Paul, the driver of the car in which Princess Diana died, pictured in July 1997.
Reuters
Garrec said: “We were very close. We’d meet up three or four times a week. Whatever anyone says, I know he was not responsible for the crash. I am willing to admit that Henri had a reputation as a bon vivant, but he was someone responsible. I can’t see him getting drunk all evening and then driving. If he took the wheel it was because he knew he could take it, he would not have endangered the lives of others…Henri was made the scapegoat.”
Henri Paul’s brother, Alain, said: “I don’t want to have to see the wreckage of a car that my brother died in over and over again. It’s inhumane. Yet again people are trying to profit from the death of my brother and of Princess Diana. I don’t know how they can call this entertainment. For them it is simply business. And as it’s only business for them they should send me a cheque. But they won’t. They didn’t even have the decency to inform me about it.”
This week in royal history
Today, eight years ago, some long overdue royal progress: the Succession to the Crown Act (2013) became law, establishing gender-blind succession.
Unanswered questions
Is Andrew really writing a tell-all memoir, or using the threat of it as a useful bargaining chip as his brother King Charles considers evicting him from Royal Lodge, or indeed play any future royal role?
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